Electric Cars II - Not Silly!

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I've no problem with this.
It's just Mercedes finding out how gullible and insecure its customers are

[barkingmad]

Damnit, that’s yet another sale lost, what can we possibly do to hype up the fear to make it all sustainable;

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/car ... oondoggle/

Why do TPTB carry on regardless when the peasants are doing some basic maths and shying away from this impossible dream?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

1. Because everyone having electric cars was never the aim. It was rich people having electric cars, and everyone else on electric public transport to their place of slavery.
2. TPTB don't do Plan B. They expect everyone to do what they say immediately.

The fundamental problem is that to get what they want, TPTB throughout history have relied on clever, realistic managers and foremen to turn their wishes into something like reality.
And those people have largely gone. They aren't working for government and major corporations any more. Mostly, they got fired for pointing out the idiocies and impossibilities of what was being asked.
Some started their own small businesses. The rest retired early during the pandemic.
There are two big giveaways. Firstly, stuff is being introduced or done that hasn't a hope in hell of working right from the start, because those in charge are completed disconnected from reality and everyone they employ is a yes-man.
Secondly, when a crisis occurs, it snowballs rapidly, costs vast amounts to stop, and never gets fixed properly for the next time. And the consequences trigger more crises elsewhere.
The economy is children playing with matches...in the fireworks warehouse.

[1DC]

Mrs 1DC's petrol Lexus went in for a service today and we were given an all electric Lexus UX to use. This car has to be the nippiest vehicle I have ever had and had all the bells and whistles one would require. Having said that I didn't feel comfortable in it and an EV is not for me, fortunately what we already have will probably see us out but if not we should still have time to get a replacement petrol if necessary.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Interesting.
Could you give a little more detail on what you didn't feel comfortable about?

[4mastacker]

You know that right-hand drive Tesla you were going to order tomorrow? Unlucky! Only LHD versions available from now on.

Tesla halts sales of right-hand drive cars

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Thanks for posting.

Professor David Bailey, of Birmingham Business School, said: ‘Tesla has basically decided the right hand drive market is too small for their upmarket models to justify the extra expense of doing RHD.’

Which tells you all you need to know about UK EV sales, and where they are going.

Jim Holder, industry commentator, said: ‘Tesla’s stance seems astonishing – the compromise will not only impact the driving experience but residuals too, as the cars will be far less desirable as a result.

‘While it will bring manufacturing efficiencies and cost savings for Tesla, the cost to its business longer-term will surely be substantial.’

Not if they expect sales to drop significantly.

[OneHungLow]

As I have tried to point out here before, Elon Musk's fellow pupils at Bryanston High had him bang to rights as a total prick, well before he inherited Tesla.

Inherited, in the sense, that he wasn't the brains behind the tech, just the money bringer, borrowed from Californian tax breaks, and the very wealthy, risk taking entrepreneurs, who are now expecting a financial return on their gamble!

[1DC]

Fox: I wasn't keen on the acceleration, I expect you would get used to it but I was too conscious of avoiding cars ahead of you when in traffic. Similarly avoiding speeding tickets. I didn't like the silence. It was expensive and gave less than 200 miles range which I wouldn't be comfortable with if I was going out of town. I'm glad I am at an age where I can choose not to be forced have one.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Thanks.
I suspected the acceleration might be an issue. Electric motors deliver max torque/ acceleration at min revs, quite unlike ICE vehicles.
I have an electric bike which allows the rider to select 5 levels of assist, effectively allowing one to simulate an ICE vehicle by treating the assist level as the gear one would select in an ICE manual gearbox.
When slowing down to stop at a junction, I cycle down the assist levels so I am at the minimum for restarting.
Wouldn't work for most customers these days, of course "What's a manual gearbox??".
Electric motors on things like good electric saws have soft-start circuitry to maximise controllability.
The electric car manufacturers are still obsessed with 0-60 times, and don't give a stuff about users who aren't racing drivers.
It could have been put in right from the start. It could be put in now with a software update.
But sadly, marketing is 'flog them what you have', rather than what it's supposed to be 'find out what they want and make it'.

As for range anxiety, the manufacturers are still ignoring it, because they have no solution.
They are rather forced into pretending it isn't a problem, because otherwise it shows up government policy for being stupid.

[4mastacker]

I suspect that, for in the UK, the insurance costs for a LHD vehicle are going to cause potential owners to look at other manufacturers products meaning dropping sales of Tesla. Also, other countries where RHD is the norm, may be similarly affected. A brave move by Mr Musk.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Tesla sold 16,368 vehicles in the UK in 2022, which makes it as important to Tesla as the State of Maryland, and less important than the city of San Diego.
Brave, it is not.

[PHXPhlyer]

Wife of radiologist who drove Tesla off Calif. cliff with family inside said he did it 'on purpose,' unsealed docs reveal
Dharmesh Patel’s wife told authorities he said he was “going to drive off the cliff” and “he drove off on purpose" after their Tesla plunged off Devil's Slide in San Mateo County in January.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wi ... -rcna85033

The wife of the California radiologist accused of intentionally driving his Tesla off a 330-foot cliff with her and their two young children inside early this year told authorities he plunged off the precipice “on purpose,” newly unsealed documents reveal.

Dr. Dharmesh Patel, 41, was charged with three counts of attempted murder, accused of driving off the Pacific Coast Highway and over a cliff at Devil’s Slide in San Mateo County on Jan. 2. He pleaded not guilty in February.

Miraculously, no one was harmed. The two young children were 7 and 4 years old at the time.

Documents in the case unsealed Wednesday show Patel’s wife told authorities multiple times that he deliberately drove off the cliff.

She told a paramedic helping extricate the family from the crushed vehicle that Patel “had driven off the side of the road on purpose,” the filing said. “She repeated this multiple times.”

The court documents said that Patel was next to her and that he was coherent but that he “did not say anything unless he was spoken to.”

A second paramedic at the crash site said Patel’s wife was very worried about the safety of her children. She told that paramedic that “the defendant drove the vehicle off the cliff on purpose and that he was trying to kill them all,” according to the documents. “She said this approximately three times,” the paramedic added.

Patel's wife also told a California Highway Patrol officer: “He drove off. He’s depressed. He’s a doctor. He said he was going to drive off the cliff. He drove off on purpose.”

The highway patrol also interviewed witnesses who saw the Tesla before it plunged off the cliff.

Two witnesses reported the Tesla “accelerated” as it traveled toward the cliffside, and none of the witnesses said the driver tried to brake before he plummeted off the cliff, the documents said.

A nearby security camera also captured the moment the Tesla drove off the cliffside. It showed the Tesla traveling within the lines on the road, slowing down and turning right onto the cliff.

“The Tesla then takes a gradual right turn, plunging off the cliffside. There is no indication of attempts to brake or to turn the Tesla in a different direction,” the filing said.

The unsealed documents also shed light on what Patel said about the crash.

When he was interviewed at the hospital, “he claimed he had pulled over to check his tire pressure, which the Tesla indicated was low earlier that morning,” the documents said.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said Thursday that “we do not think Mr. Patel’s statement is consistent with the facts.”

The unsealed filings also showed that when investigators asked Patel whether he was depressed, he responded “not really.” But he said he was feeling down about “the war and drugs and crazy stuff.”

The filing said officers spoke with Patel’s family. His sister said she spoke with Patel the previous night and recalled that he was “sad about the war and other things occurring in the news.” He said he was worried about “the future of his children due to everything going on in the world,” she said, according to the documents.

Authorities responding to the crash were stunned to find that there were survivors in the severely damaged vehicle.

Cal Fire officials said it was incredibly “rare” for anyone to survive such a steep fall. One expert described the family’s survival as “kind of a miracle, considering the impact severity.”

The white Tesla Model Y was visibly crushed on all sides after it barreled off Devil’s Slide, about 20 miles south of San Francisco, the morning of Jan. 2.

The car flipped over and landed on its wheels. Firefighters had to rappel to the scene, extricate the family and call for helicopters to hoist them to safety.

The unsealed filings said that Patel’s wife was hospitalized in critical condition and that she was in the hospital for over a month before she was released to an outside treatment facility.

Their daughter sustained a broken hand, and their son had a wound to the back of his head, the filings said. Once the children were discharged, they were placed in the care of the defendant’s sister.

Patel is due back in court June 12 for a preliminary hearing. Two of the three attempted murder charges include special allegations of domestic violence and intent to cause great bodily injury.

At the hearing, a judge will determine whether the prosecution evidence supports the charges of attempted murder, Wagstaffe said.

In February, Patel’s attorney, Joshua Bentley, told a judge that Patel’s wife did not want him to be prosecuted, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Wagstaffe said Thursday that Patel's wife talked to law enforcement after the crash and that "the next occasion for her to speak on the matter will be the preliminary hearing."

Emails and calls to Patel’s attorney went unanswered Thursday. No one answered at a cellphone number listed for Patel on Thursday.

PP

[Woody]

Tesla sold 16,368 vehicles in the UK in 2022, which makes it as important to Tesla as the State of Maryland, and less important than the city of San Diego.
Brave, it is not.

Not sure where you got that figure from Fox?

The Tesla Model 3, the car that topped the charts in 2021 with 25,171 sales, moved down one place in 2022, registering only 19,071 sales in comparison to the Model Y’s 35,000+.

Auto Express states the car’s quality and practicality are comparable to the Model S.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Statista.com, I think.
So, it looks like they sold triple what I read.
I still think it's a purely commercial decision, although I would have thought it was cheaper to design a RHD version of an electric vehicle than an equivalent ICE one.

[barkingmad]

More bad news regarding electrically powered vehicles, though this time it's an e-bike as opposed to a 'proper' self-combusting EV;

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/05/27/wat ... -of-flats/

From the article; "Spontaneous combustion is a known problem with electric vehicle batteries, which, while rare, is somewhat catastrophic when it happens".

It won't be rare if the Climate Emergency folks have their way and markedly increase the number of such devices in daily use?

[OFSO]

Car Dealer Mag - June 1st.
A worrying 29 of the top 30 biggest depreciating used cars in the last six months are electric – with some losing nearly 40 per cent of their value.

The Nissan Leaf (2017 model) has lost 39.4 per cent in just six months, according to data shared exclusively with Car Dealer.

The figures are the combination of the monthly percentage drops the used cars have suffered since December.

The data looks at three year old cars with average mileage. The prices are trade values, so the figures dealers will pay to buy the cars at auction.

Overall during the six-month period electric cars have lost on average 33.6 per cent.

Petrol cars during the same period have lost just 0.5 per cent and diesel cars have lost 1.3 per cent.

Only the Alfa Romeo Mito diesel – in 21st place – is the only non-electric car on the list, dropping 27.9 per cent.

When it comes to monetary value – actual pounds lost in the period – the Porsche Taycan has fallen the most, losing £20,750. This was closely followed by the Tesla Model X, losing £20,086, and the Tesla Model S which has lost £16,217.

The stark figures show the impact of the huge price drops used electric cars have suffered in the last few months as buyer confidence has waned and consumers shun the used EV market.

[barkingmad]

Of course they're not silly, lots of them have been manufactured, pushed out of the factories and even registered for the road!

But now comes some embarrassing footage, which if authentic, blows a large hole below the waterline of the EV Myth;

https://www.bitchute.com/video/oQwWjUZQabUR/

But of course such fields must be visible and likely will feature in NASA satellite photos, but they are not publishing such visual proof of the scam.



Don'tya just lurve "The Science".

[barkingmad]

From the Torygraph newspaper, behind a paywall so repro'd from the DailySceptic website'

"Is Britain’s Electric Car Revolution a Race Against Time or a Costly Gamble?

Boris Johnson’s ambitious plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 is floundering as the scale of the undertaking becomes clear. The affordability of electric cars, the need for extensive charging infrastructure, and the risk to industry jobs are just some of the hurdles that are derailing the country’s green industrial revolution. Will the U.K. be ready, asks Matt Oliver in the Telegraph, or is ‘carmageddon’ inevitable?

With a year to go before Britain hosted the Cop26 climate conference, Boris Johnson was preparing to make an eye-catching announcement.

The then-prime minister was poised to set out his 10-point plan to spark a green industrial revolution – and the centrepiece was a vow to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.

A highly ambitious target, this was five years sooner than the deadline he had set just nine months earlier, which car industry bosses dismissed as “a date without a plan”.

It was also a decade before the target outlined by his predecessor, Theresa May, only two years beforehand.

“Our green industrial revolution will be powered by the wind turbines of Scotland and the northeast, propelled by the electric vehicles made in the Midlands and advanced by the latest technologies developed in Wales, so we can look ahead to a more prosperous, greener future,” Mr. Johnson said in November 2020.

His speech, the Government said, would put the U.K. on course to be the fastest G7 nation to decarbonise road transport.

Yet the new sales ban – described by the Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders as “immensely challenging” – represented a huge gamble, with the potential to either turbocharge or tank Britain’s domestic car industry.

And astonishingly, for such a consequential policy, no detailed proposals to achieve it had actually been drawn up.

Instead, Johnson and other ministers hoped the stretching target would cement demand for electric vehicles, galvanising businesses to manufacture supplies and build the legions of chargers that would be required.

“It’s like the classic example of putting a man on the moon,” one former minister involved in the policy says.

“When Kennedy said ‘We’re going to put a man on the moon’, he did not know how they were going to get there. He just said this is the target – and they got there.”

Fast forward to today, however, and the scale of the undertaking has become clear.

Electric cars still remain unaffordable for most households, while a huge upgrade of the power grid will be needed in order to boost the number of vehicle chargers in Britain from 42,000 at present to the more than 300,000 being sought by ministers.

Meanwhile, to serve demand for vehicles domestically, around five battery ‘gigafactories’ are needed in the U.K. – with hundreds of thousands of industry jobs at risk if they are not secured.

Experts say we are now at a crossroads. A report published this week by the Climate Change Committee, the statutory Net Zero watchdog, said that rising electric car sales were promising but work to build chargers “now needs to scale up more quickly”.

Separately, industry leaders say time is running out for Britain to secure the gigafactories that will be the bedrock of its future car manufacturing base. A failure to do so, while sticking with the 2030 ban on new petrol car sales, threatens a jobs bloodbath.

As the clock ticks down, alarm is growing that Britain will simply not be ready for 2030 – and a delay is increasingly likely.

The U.K.’s commitment to reach Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050 will require emissions from vehicles to be almost eradicated.

Surface transport, including cars, accounts for the biggest chunk of Britain’s annual carbon emissions, representing 23% last year.

This was about 105 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the Climate Change Committee’s latest report says, which was 3% up from 2021 but 8% below pre-pandemic levels.

The reduction was mostly down to increased working from home, rising fuel prices and so-called low-traffic neighbourhoods, with a small contribution from rising electric vehicle sales.

But a crunch point is fast approaching at which sales of electric cars – which have much lower lifetime emissions than petrol ones – will need to do more of the heavy lifting".

Regrettably the piece had to acknowledge the chief architect of the plan, but perhaps the initials BJ summarise the lack of ultimate productive success...?

[OFSO]

Mainstream electric car adoption faces another major stumbling block as battery vehicles are more expensive to repair, take longer to fix and are more commonly written off as a result of damage to their batteries.

This Is Money, today